


Polestar

by DameRuth



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25055689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Written for the Winter Companions LJ challenge, prompts: Arctic snow, shared body heat, and the Doctor saying "thank you" properly to Jack.  Spoilers for the finale of S3, though  nothing too detailed.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2007.07.28. I consider this my proto-"Flowers" story - not a part of that continuity, but the first to look at Ten/Jack with that particular emotional tone in mind. Obviously, I ended up with a lot more to say about it once I got started.]
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Polestar

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a single burst, the result (I now realize) of recently visiting the site where a good friend's ashes were scattered a year ago, lending this image its melancholy mood and thoughts of times gone by.
> 
> Not designed to fit into any one continuity -- if you squint right, it could practically fit in any of them.

Jack was staring at his computer screen with a glare that could have melted lead as he chewed on his pen and tried to figure out exactly how to fill out the paperwork UNIT had sent him. It was always a delicate dance with that organization, trying not to give away anything disadvantageous to Torchwood while still keeping as close to the truth as possible (for the sake of later deniability if UNIT got hold of more information than he’d like). His thoughts were spinning in circles, and even the deep hush of the Hub at 2 am was somehow irritating and distracting.  
  
Without warning, the silence was broken by a familiar/impossible sound — a Type 40 TARDIS engine that had a bad tendency to catch gears during the materialization cycle.  
  
A shockwave of displaced air swept through the Hub, scattering papers everywhere. Jack groaned, even as the unwilling smile tugged at his lips. The Doctor never could make a tidy entrance.  
  
Jack stepped out of his office, and was nearly within arm’s length of the familiar, weathered wooden shell when the door popped open, and a slender, brown-clad form slipped out. The Doctor’s hair was maniacally tousled, his eyes were bright and his grin was almost too wide for his fine features to contain. His body language was relaxed, and he didn’t seem to be in any particular rush.  
  
“So,” Jack said, getting the first word, “Is this visit business or pleasure?” He cocked an eyebrow, and his tone was light and flirtatious, but the question was genuine. Trouble tended to follow the Doctor like thunder after a lightning strike.  
  
The Doctor leaned back against the TARDIS and crossed his arms over his narrow chest. His manner was airy and light, though he could, in fact, be feeling anything under that façade -- as Jack was well aware.  
  
“Oh, pleasure. At least, I hope so. Thought I’d see if you were up for a trip. Nothing involved, just a jaunt. Figured you might like a bit of a break, get away from the Earth for a bit . . .?”  
  
“I’m up to my . . . ears in paperwork,” Jack began, censoring the “up to my ass” that nearly popped out naturally. For some reason, he found himself tidying his vocabulary automatically when around the Doctor. “I have to get it done by morning . . .”  
  
The Doctor raised his thick, expressive eyebrows, and ran a hand invitingly along the TARDIS’s paneling. “It travels in Time,” he pointed out, reasonably -- though his tone of voice and the slight curl at the corners of his mouth hinted that he was trying not to laugh.  
  
True enough. It wasn’t like Jack would need to sleep when he got back. And it wasn’t like he was getting anywhere with that form, either — his brain had locked gears in frustration and was refusing to shift properly. A break might help get him thinking effectively again . . .  
  
“Oh, come on!” the Doctor told him, breaking into a smile, teasing. “You know you want to! One trip, one teeny-tiny stroll through Time and space, for old times’ sake.”  
  
Jack blew out his breath, deciding in an instant. He could afford to play hooky for a bit, and it might even do him some good.  
  
After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t have the time. Time — he had more of it than anyone could know what to do with.  
  
The Doctor saw the change in his face, and the wide, loony grin was back even before Jack told him, “I’ll get my coat.”  
  
\---  
  
“Where are we headed?” Jack asked, moving automatically to take up a position opposite the Doctor at the control panel. He found he still remembered everything — the few months he’d had with Rose and the Doctor might as well have been branded onto his soul. And his heart, but he tried not to think about that. “Is Martha belowdecks . . .?”  
  
The Doctor slowed in his movements, but didn’t look up at Jack.  
  
“Ah. To answer in order, I don’t know where we’re headed — I thought I’d let the TARDIS pick — and Martha’s . . . gone. Decided it was time to finish becoming a doctor and all that. Very determined young woman, she’ll do well.”  
  
_Huh,_ Jack thought, understanding. _So she dumped you, you’re lonely, and you thought you’d just drop in on your old friend Jack Harkness._ There was no bitterness to the thought, just comprehension, a slight pang for the Doctor’s now-obvious loneliness, and, oddly, a faint sense of being complimented that the Doctor considered him someone to turn to, now, rather than an aberration to flee.  
  
“Pot luck it is, then,” Jack told him. He patted the TARDIS’s controls affectionately, and the ship hummed back at him. He was glad she'd forgiven him for shooting her up to break the Master’s paradox, and she seemed no more inclined than the Doctor to flee him, now. Acceptance could be the warmest welcome of all, sometimes.  
  
\--  
  
The breeze that puffed into the TARDIS’s control room when the Doctor opened the door was arctic cold, and carried a thin swirl of ice crystals that melted almost instantly in the ambient room temperature.  
  
Jack knew where they were in his heart and gut before his conscious mind even had a chance to engage logically. The frosty air carried a faint, crisp scent that reached right into Jack’s lizard brain and pulled up memories with almost hallucinogenic clarity.  
  
_The Doctor: different, wearing leather and a prickly manner; next to him, Rose, all glowing, youthful enthusiasm.  
  
“Where are we?” she asked eyes wide and bright, anticipating wonders.  
  
“Woman Wept,” the Doctor replied, with a daft, happy smile, and Rose cocked her head questioningly, obviously not sure she’d heard aright. “No, really, that’s the name of the planet — Woman Wept. Dunno why, but it’s fantastic! Come and see . . .”  
  
He grinned, and reached out his hand. Rose took it, grinning back with no hesitation at all, and let the Doctor draw her out the door. Jack followed them, a half-step behind._  
  
“So,” said the current Doctor, more a huff of breathy recognition than a word. Without making another sound, his face still and expressionless, he stepped out the door. As before, Jack followed.  
  
\--  
  
The TARDIS stood on one of the world’s vast beaches, and beyond the shore was the sea.  
  
Sometime, ages ago, it had frozen and never thawed — but this was no placid ice sheet. Not even a landscape of icebergs and pressure-fractured blocks. This was an ocean frozen as if in the midst of an incredible storm. Great sweeping waves of ice, heartbreakingly graceful, curled their delicate tops high overhead, and the open space between them was sharp and choppy. Every surface was dusted with glittering hoarfrost, and fine ice crystals blew in the thin breeze like pale quartz sand.  
  
The sky was dark, and would have been full of stars in a perpetual night, the northern hemisphere of the planet forever tilted away from its primary star, if it hadn’t been for the aurora.  
  
Far brighter and more vivid than any terrestrial phenomenon, the northern lights of Woman Wept filled the sky with rivers and curtains and waves of color — blood red, grass green, lilac and gold, fuchsia and azure, shot through with startling bolts of pure snow white. The silence was profound. Jack and the Doctor were, after all, literally the only living things on the surface of the planet for hundreds of miles.  
  
Neither of them spoke, but by mutual consent they began to walk, stepping off the pale sand onto the paler ice and leaving the shore behind. It might be perpetual night here, but there was no lack of light — the ice and frost reflected the glory of the aurora with a shadowless intensity that rivaled daylight of some worlds.  
  
Jack lengthened his stride to keep up with the Doctor’s leggy speed. They walked in step, hands in pockets, the tails of Jack’s greatcoat and the Doctor’s long overcoat flaring in the light breeze. It was cold — not bitterly so, but enough to make the skin of Jack’s face prickle, and the air to crackle in his nostrils every time he inhaled. Their breath blew out as steam — Jack’s in a thick, white banner, the Doctor’s much fainter and wispier.  
  
_Once upon a time, when they’d been here before, Rose was positively plastered to the Doctor's side as they walked, her arm through his, huddling next to even his low body temperature. Halfway out from the shore, she extended her free hand to Jack. After a quick, covert glance in the Doctor’s direction (met by a sardonic but nonthreatening flash of eye contact), Jack had taken Rose’s hand and tucked it next to the warmth of his side. Sighing, she pulled him in close, and together they continued to walk out amongst the towering frozen waves._  
  
Without warning the Doctor stopped, and then looked directly up. Jack came to a halt next him, and followed his gaze, confused — the aurora was spectacular, of course, but he didn’t see anything special about that particular patch of sky.  
  
“And here we are,” the Doctor said conversationally, as if they’d been chatting the whole time. “Welcome to True North on Woman Wept, Jack. The TARDIS brought us to within walking distance of it, this time.”  
  
Jack didn’t bother to ask if the Doctor was sure. One didn’t argue temporospatial orientation with a Time Lord.  
  
“Up there, somewhere, is the current polestar, a blue-white type O star sometimes called Antahn’a’ret,” _Icefire,_ the TARDIS translated for Jack, though it was not a language he’d ever heard before, “depending on who you talk to . . . “  
  
“Huh. Doesn’t do anyone a whole lot of good from down here,” Jack commented, practically, squinting and trying to see any stars through the ever-shifting glory of the aurora.  
  
“No, I suppose not,” the Doctor replied, quietly, still staring upward at the invisible reference point.  
  
\--  
  
The TARDIS was a far more subtle entity than even he'd realized, the Doctor mused, staring up at the sky. All around him, he could feel the world of Woman Wept spinning, but he stood at the one, truly still point — for this hemisphere, anyway — while above hung the fixed beacon of the polestar. Not permanently fixed, of course, since the planet’s axis was undergoing a long, slow, rotation that would eventually single out a range of different polestars over the thousands of years. But on an everyday scale, that motion was a snail’s crawl, and Icefire stood still as a relative stone in the heavens above them.  
  
There were greater motions at work — the rotation of the planet around its sun, the stately whirlpool of the galaxy, the galaxy’s own motion through Time and Space, all of them real and discrete — but the overwhelming sense was one of stillness.  
  
In a setting like that, the immortal standing next to the Doctor almost seemed to belong. For once, Jack’s unique nature as a single fixed point in reality was almost absorbed into the background.  
  
Somehow, the Doctor doubted the TARDIS had chosen to materialize her accidentally.  
  
He dropped his gaze from the heavens, and looked at Jack for the first time since they’d arrived.  
  
Jack was still staring up at the sky, meditatively watching the play of auroral colors. Catching the Doctor’s movement from the corner of his eye, he lowered his head and met the Time Lord’s gaze. In the dim, multi-hued light his blue eyes were nearly black, and the even, regular planes of his face were calm. With his anachronistic clothing, Jack might have been a statue, carved to honor the fallen of a long-ago war — except for the regular, white plume of his breath.  
  
“Strange, isn’t it,” he commented, “how places stay the same when everything else changes?”  
  
“Oh, places change,” the Doctor said, “it just takes them longer.”  
  
Jack grimaced in agreement. “True enough.” He cocked his head at the Doctor. “So you’re traveling solo again.” It was a statement and not a question.  
  
The Doctor nodded, and looked back up in the direction of the polestar again, preferring it to meeting Jack’s questioning gaze.  
  
“I really will need to go back,” Jack said again, after a moment, gently but firmly.  
  
“Oh, of course! Never doubted that! Captain Jack Harkness, defender of the Earth — it’s perfect. You’re just what they need.”  
  
Jack snorted. “I’m not always sure about that, but I hope so.”  
  
The Doctor didn’t look at Jack, but he could see him tilting his head back towards the sky again via his peripheral vision. “I’m sure she’s fine,” he said easily.  
  
“What? Who?” the Doctor asked, genuinely confused for a moment. Martha . . .?  
  
“Rose. She was amazing, and she learned a lot from you — I could see it even in the time I was with you.”  
  
“Yeah, she was . . . amazing. Fantastic, even.” The use of the old, familiar word caught Jack’s attention again, and the Doctor sighed and looked down at his trainers. He was getting a crick in his neck from looking up. Then he glanced up through his eyebrows at Jack, his gaze sharpening. “Why Rose? Why bring her up now?”  
  
Jack cocked his head. “Hard not to, being here . . .”  
  
And he was right. This place, so vivid in memory, brought the contrast between the past and the present into sharp relief. Rose gone, the Doctor changed — and Jack changed, too, in even more profound ways.  
  
The Doctor looked down at his toes (they were getting a bit damp and chilly, by now, though he wasn’t anywhere near the frostbite a human might have courted), uncharacteristically at a loss for words. His hands, lonely in his pockets without Rose’s hand to hold in return, clenched into fists, and a sudden shiver racked his bones.  
  
Jack was watching him with close attention, and he immediately asked, “Cold?”  
  
“No,” the Doctor replied, a little sullenly, irritated for no good reason that Jack thought him so susceptible to something so prosaic as temperature. Then, to make things worse, he shivered again.  
  
Ice crystals squeaked under Jack’s boots as he walked closer. “You sure?” he asked, with mild concern. “I’m not feeling it, but then, I never do anymore. It’s hard for me to tell. We could head back to the TARDIS . . .”  
  
He rested a concerned hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, and the furnace heat was noticeable even through the layers of clothing the Doctor wore. No, Jack wasn’t likely to be feeling anything less than the cold of absolute zero, anymore, and that as an abstract more than anything else.  
  
“I’m fine!” the Doctor gritted, angrily.  
  
“You’re full of it,” Jack corrected, matter-of-factly. In one smooth, easy motion, he pulled the Doctor into his arms.  
  
Startled, the Doctor’s first thought was to resist, but then, against his conscious will, his hands slid out of his pockets, and reached around Jack’s waist, between the fever-heat of his skin, and the warmth of the wool greatcoat Jack wore. Jack wrapped his arms around the Doctor’s shoulders, in turn, and pulled him close.  
  
The Doctor rested his forehead against Jack’s shoulder, eyes closed, and inhaled the scent of wool and human, light and faintly musky underneath the aroma of Jack's aftershave. He exhaled, and his own thin, cool breath was trapped between the fabric of the greatcoat and his face, chilling and warming at the same time.  
  
“Better?” Jack asked, voice quiet and affectionate. He wasn’t talking entirely about the temperature, and the Doctor knew it.  
  
The Doctor didn’t reply, but he raised his head and rested his chin on Jack’s shoulder. Jack gently rubbed his cheek along the Doctor’s, warm skin brushing cooler skin. The gesture took the embrace beyond simple shared affection, and into another category altogether — although the length of time the Doctor was allowing the embrace to continue was just as telling. This wasn’t a quick hug of triumph or relief. This was . . . comfort.  
  
\--  
  
The Doctor didn’t pull back from Jack’s cheek-rub, allowing it as he’d allowed a single kiss, long ago — a gesture residing in some strange, grey area of their friendship.  
  
Greatly daring, Jack nuzzled the Doctor’s untidy hair, something he’d wanted to do since he first saw that extravagant mass of spiky brown the Doctor now sported. He inhaled deeply, and smelled hair-care fragrances — shampoo, and no doubt mousse, too, to get that carelessly tousled effect — but underneath was a faint hint of honey and vinegar. Sharp, organic, not unpleasant, but hardly human.  
  
Slowly, he exhaled, the warmth of his breath catching in the Doctor’s hair, and still the embrace was allowed. If anything, the Doctor leaned into Jack more closely, so that he was aware of how thin the Time Lord really was under his many layers of clothing — skin and bones, almost, with a thin layer of whipcord muscle, spiky and uncomfortable to hold.  
  
Jack closed his eyes and sighed, smiling, savoring a moment he knew could never last.  
  
\--  
  
The Doctor let himself melt into the heat of Jack’s embrace — almost shocking, compared to the arctic chill surrounding them — and the bizarre sensation of being enfolded by a single fixed point, the only one in the Universe. Normally, that absoluteness would have driven him away, but here in this perfect still center at the heart of Woman Wept’s rotational axis, it felt . . . right. It was a moment out of space, out of Time, in some quiet place the Doctor hadn’t known could ever exist. The sensation was amazingly peaceful.  
  
Jack’s breath burned, trapped in his hair, a sensual, primitive feeling. In response, the Doctor rubbed his cheek against Jack’s neck, savoring the added warmth, and the sensation of that perfect, metronome heartbeat. Steady, reliable. Fitting.  
  
The Doctor knew himself, understood that his first and strongest reaction had always been to run: away from something, towards something, either way, depending on the circumstances. It would always be like that, for him. Not Jack, though. Push him, and he got stubborn, dug in, pushed back. If there was ever anyone who had the perfect nature to be eternal, it was this ferociously determined human.  
  
_And I’ll keep coming back to him,_ the Doctor realized, _like a comet to the sun. He’s the one polestar I’ll ever know, the only thing that’ll always be true and fixed.  
  
Maybe Rose knew better than any of us, what to do with the future the Bad Wolf showed her . . ._  
  
The Doctor raised his lips to Jack’s ear, and whispered, “Thank you.”  
  
“For what?” Jack’s voice vibrated through both their ribcages. He sounded genuinely bemused.  
  
“For letting me come back. For being where I need you, always.”  
  
“Not like I have a choice . . .” Jack began, with the beginnings of his usual sarcasm.  
  
“Oh, there’s always a choice,” the Doctor breathed.  
  
A pause, and then Jack continued. “ . . . But if I did have a choice, I’d take this,” he finished, voice softening.  
  
The Doctor dropped his head to Jack’s shoulder again, and the single tear he shed burned like ice and fire down his cheek, carefully hidden from Jack’s view.  
  
After a moment, the Doctor realized that Jack was rocking him slightly, a comforting motion. The movement became more pronounced, and Jack’s hands shifted. As smoothly as he’d been drawn in to begin with, the Doctor found himself dancing — slowly and faintly at first, but the motion increased as both of them eased into it.  
  
\--  
  
Jack had been humming under his breath, but as they fell into step, he added his voice to a few notes — which cracked horribly, out of tune.  
  
Embarrassed, he cleared his throat. “Ouch. Sorry. Let’s try that again,” he murmured into the Doctor’s ear.  
  
A few more rough notes, and then his voice kicked into gear, and he was humming in tune. Not loudly, but clear and strong: “Moonlight Serenade,” the old tune, full of memories and meaning.  
  
_Last dances and lost causes — it’s like my own special theme, isn’t it?_ Jack thought — but if the words were ironic, the smile that touched his lips was warm and grateful. _Guess I'm just lucky . . ._ He stopped thinking, and gave himself over to the flow of the music, and the indescribable sensation of holding the Doctor, fierce and fragile, in his arms.  
  
Together, in that timeless moment on a frozen sea, balanced at the top of a world, the two of them danced with only the silent aurora to see.  
  
  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
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